Blood Upon the Valley
by graceofgod
Summary: He might have walked out of the forest at Savoy, but Aramis died that day.


A/N: So it's been a while since I've done this. I've tinkered off and on in a few different worlds, but for some reason this little piece is the one that's finally come together. It's sort of strange and a bit bleak (no surprise there, right?) but I hope you enjoy.

Title from The River by Blues Saraceno.

I own many things, the Musketeers aren't any of them.

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 _In the darkest nights, he dreams of dawn light on snow, of the newly risen sun shining through the trees to turn black pools red, and of the crows that came with the dawn to feast, of shouting to drive them away until his voice was nothing more than a whisper. He dreams of falling to his knees in the middle of the carnage and finding that all of the prayers he'd once known were lost to him, a vast, echoing void where his faith had once burned._

When he wakes, he reminds himself to yawn, to greet the friends who've taught him how to mimic the life he once had. He feigns weariness when Porthos spars with him, exhaustion at the end of a training duel with Athos and pretends not to notice the way Serge and Treville look at him sometimes, the only men left in the regiment who saw him come back alone from Savoy. He wonders if they saw him for what he was then, if they still do.

 _He dreams of waking a second time, to realise that he was as lifeless as the bodies all around him, that he didn't shake with the cold or see his breath steaming on the air as he forced his body up, to start the long walk out of the forest. He dreams of the cabin that he found, smoke rising from the crude chimney, light shining from the window and the look of terror on the face of the woodsman who answered his knock, of the icy chill of loneliness as he turned away from the cabin and stumbled back into the dark where he belonged._

Outside the city, away from the ever-present noise of the city, he can hear the silence inside himself and he keeps his hands busy cleaning his musket, making camp, anything to mask the unnatural stillness that tries to overtake him. When they're attacked on the road, he lets the rage drive him into the renegades, recklessly charging them down and hacking at them with no grace and little skill. Their blood coats his hands by the time Porthos pulls him off the last one, thick and metallic in his mouth and he wrenches out of his friends' grasp, vomits up what feels like everything he's ever eaten.

It's only when the others force him to sit on the bank of the river that runs snow-melt full beside the road that he notices the deep cuts on his arms, legs and back; he feigns hurt, winces and snarls with pain he can't feel but his skin still darkens with bruises and he still bleeds as Athos stitches his wounds. The brandy Porthos gives him has no effect, but he lets himself slip down into the strange simulacrum of sleep that swallows him up like the ground in Savoy swallowed the bodies of the dead.

 _He dreams of the fear that had gripped him when he heard his name echoing through the forest, the certainty that they would see him for the monster he had become, the strange sense of dread when they didn't and greeted him instead as a brother, took him back to Paris in their midst._

 _He dreams of learning how to breathe again, pulling air into and out of his lungs, the relief when the garrison mistook his fearful retreat into solitude for grief._

When he's not training or patrolling, he spends his nights seeking out the warmth that he never feels any more, finds it in wine and brandy or in the touch of soft skin against his, hot kisses that remind him to breathe in perfume and sweat. He tells himself the drink doesn't taste of ashes and gravedirt, that he sees the women in his hands instead of the bodies he'd buried so long ago and sometimes he can almost believe it.

When he can't, he walks the city streets until he might be tired enough to sleep without dreams and then he turns his weary steps toward the garrison, sinks into his bed and lets the mimicry of life stop for a while.

And then he dreams again.


End file.
